Find out what's going on for the 40th season or racing at the Valley Preferred Cycling Center

There's a reason the 40th anniversary season of professional cycling at the Valley Preferred Cycling Center in Trexlertown is kicking off with a bang tonight.

The World Series of Bicycling, the Friday night summer international professional racing series, is bringing in some of the best track cyclists in the world to compete, as the top New Zealanders, Dutch, Canadians and more mix it up with the best cyclists in the U.S., many of them homegrown, for the first three weeks of June.

"This month there seems to be a ton of guys coming in, so it should be really good competition and good racing," said 2016 Olympic hopeful Matt Baranoski of Perkasie, a multi-time U.S. national champion.

The reasons are plain and simple, but borne out of 40 years of hard work and dedication into making the velodrome in T-town a destination for cyclists from around the world.

When the U.S. Sprint Grand Prix kicks off at 7:30 tonight, it will mark the first of four Friday nights in June where both sprint and endurance riders can accumulate UCI points to qualify for World Cup competitions. The UCI is the world governing body of cycling, and points gained at World Cups help qualify spots for the World Championships, and ultimately starting positions in the Olympics. The VPCC is hosting six UCI-sanctioned races this summer, including two more in August.

"Being able to host the amount of UCI races we did last year and again this year is not only a feather in the cap of the Valley Preferred Cycling Center, but for our cycling community as well," said Marty Nothstein, the VPCC's executive director and homegrown Olympic gold medalist and three-time world champion.

"No other track in the world is hosting the amount of UCI races we do. The UCI awards us these events because they know how well the staff here does the job. We take a lot of pride in doing that job very well."

That's one of the reasons that a coach like two-time world champion Jan Van Eijden is bringing the British cycling team here for the month of June.

"This is as close to a World Cup as you can get, and it's happening right here in the Lehigh Valley," Nothstein said. "It's a great opportunity for riders like Baranoski, like David Espinosa, like Kim Geist to lock antlers with the best riders in the world. When you have teams from the Netherlands, Germany, New Zealand, Great Britain, Italy, Argentina, Venezuela and more coming here, it shows just how valuable these races are."

Baranoski, who will turn 22 in July, is looking forward to the racing. He is coming off a month of racing in Europe.

"I think it will be some pretty close competition," Baranoski said, "definitely a World Cup-level every week for the next three weeks. The schedule looks really good with two Keirins, two sprint tournaments and a really good amount of UCI points on the line."

Because of the caliber of cyclists, those points won't be easy to gain. Baranoski and Espinosa have been selected for the U.S. team that will compete at next month's Pan-Am Games, but the international riders are formidable.

New Zealand's Simon van Velthooven, a former regular in T-town, is an Olympic bronze medalist in the Keirin. He and the rest of his squad are coached by former T-town regular Anthony "The Weapon" Peden, whose elite men's squad also includes world championship medalists Eddie Dawkins, Ethan Mitchell, Sam Webster and Matt Archibald. Dawkins won a silver medal in the Keirin at the most recent World Championships.

And then there are the Canadians, coached by two-time U.S. Olympic medalist Erin Hartwell, the executive director at VPCC before Nothstein.

"I have my high-powered Pan Am Games team here for our final prep before the 2015 Pan Am Games scheduled for July in Toronto," Hartwell said. "We're focused on getting some racing reps and chasing UCI points for the 2015-2016 World Cup season. Most importantly, we're using the racing to sharpen up for Pan Am Games."

The Canadian squad includes 2012 Olympians Joe Veloce and Monique Sullivan (fourth in the Keirin at the 2014 World Championship, sixth at the 2012 Olympics) along with the well-known Hugo Barrette and Evan Carey, Misha Partridge and newcomer Kate O'Brien, a transfer from the bobsled.

Admission is free for the morning qualifying rounds, which begin at 10 a.m.

Admission for the evening session is $5 for general admission and $8 for finish line seats. Gates open at 6 p.m.